CASPER, Wyo.—A student who witnessed last week’s bow-and-arrow killing of a Wyoming community college instructor says she thought at first that the assailant brought the weapon into the classroom only to try to scare the victim.

Casper College student Alexus Knight tells KTWO-AM (bit.ly/VqC19M) that slain computer science instructor James Krumm was like a second father to many students.

Police say the instructor’s son, 25-year-old Christopher Krumm of Vernon, Conn., killed his father Friday and then stabbed himself to death in front of a handful of students. They say the younger man earlier had killed his father’s girlfriend, 42-year-old Heidi Arnold, at the couple’s home about two miles from campus.

Knight says she got the impression that James Krumm was trying to get away from his son after the arrow hit him. She says she ran from the classroom and hid in a bathroom until police arrived.

Florida’s state social services agency investigated Nikolas Cruz’s home life more than a year before police say he killed 17 people at his former high school, closing the inquiry after determining that his “final level of risk is low,” despite learning that the teenager had behavioral struggles and was planning to buy a gun, according to an investigative report.